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Criterion‐related versus non‐criterion‐related prompt training with severely mentally handicapped children
Author(s) -
STRAND S. C.,
MORRIS R. C.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2788.1988.tb01399.x
Subject(s) - psychology , audiology , mentally retarded , training (meteorology) , intensity (physics) , developmental psychology , medicine , meteorology , physics , quantum mechanics
. Thirty‐three severely mentally handicapped children were involved in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of three training programmes in teaching visual discriminations. Three matched sets of subjects each received both a size and an intensity discrimination with either: (1) size prompting; (2) intensity prompting; or (3) no prompting (trial‐and‐error training). The prompted groups therefore received both criterion‐related (CR) and non‐criterion‐related (NCR) training. Order of presentation of the discriminations was counterbalanced across subjects. There was a significant main effect of training group with both size and intensity prompting groups making significantly fewer errors than the trial‐and‐error group (P<0.05 in both cases), bui not differing significantly from each other. Significant linear trends for increasing errors across CR, NCR and trial‐and‐error training programmes were found for both the size discrimination (PP<0.01), and intensity discrimination (PP<0.05). More children acquired the discriminations when trained with a CR prompt than with a NCR prompt or trial‐and‐error procedure, and all four children who failed lo acquire discriminations with NCR prompts subsequently acquired them when trained with a CR programme. The results arc discussed in relation to cue discriminability and theoretical explanations involving overshadowing are considered.